Apr 20, 2015

It’s a well-known fact that Windows Phone is well behind Android and iOS in terms of market share across the world, and it’s also no secret that several experts and analysts recommended Microsoft to simply give up on its mobile platform and concentrate on what it does best.

But there’s no doubt that Windows Phone is here to stay, and with Windows 10 Microsoft is getting even more serious about its mobile efforts, with the company trying to bring together all of its platforms. And as far as a former designer who worked for Windows Phone is concerned, Microsoft not only that doesn’t want to kill the smartphone OS, but it also needs it to continue its mobile push because, as he said in an AMA on Reddit, a small market share is better than nothing. Right now, Windows Phone has somewhere between 2.5 and 3.0 percentage points in market share, according to various research firms, but Microsoft needs to keep Windows Phone alive because they have to compete in the mobile OS market as well.

“Windows Phone is small, relatively speaking. But absolutely speaking it still sells a lot of units. And they can’t not have an OS. So it’d be nice if they had more market on mobile, but having zero just topples the whole strategy,” he said.

Windows Phone 8.1 devices will be upgradeable to Windows 10

When Windows 10 will become available later this year, Microsoft will allow all devices running Windows Phone 8.1 to install it at absolutely no charge, with the company saying that handsets with 512 MB of RAM would support the OS with some feature limitations. This is needed because of the obvious hardware restrictions created by the reduced amount of memory, but no matter the device, everyone should be able to experience the new operating system when it launches. According to AMD, Windows 10 is likely to debut in late July, with some sources saying that RTM is scheduled for June. At this point, it’s not yet clear if the phone version can launch together with the PC flavor or shortly after that.